Leviticus - Cycle One - 1901-2027 - Kedoshim

I think Kedoshim is about respecting boundaries , those of ownership, law, our words, our skin, our personal stories, our grievances, our questions, Torah, and more.

Literally, Kedoshim can be seen as Acharey Moth, part two. God tells the Israelites to be holy because I am holy, to keep the Sabbath, honor mother and father, to not make false Gods. Decrees cover a peace sacrifice, the reaping of the harvest, stealing, gossiping, aiding one’s neighbor, not eating blood. Sometimes you shall and/or shall not. Those who commit adultery, bestiality, homosexuality, prostitution, incest, sex during menstruation and/or who curse their parents get killed, cut off spirituality and/or vomited from the earth (once again). Ideas that resonate get both negative and positive verbal constructs. To be sure, if the goal of Torah is divine consciousness (and it is) we won’t get there in moral anarchy. But wait a second. Who defines moral anarchy?

We shouldn’t crossbreed our animals, mix two seeds in one field, or fabrics in cloth. We must let the poor gather fruit from a corner of our land. God affirms who He is and affirms again. He’s real serious this time. He doesn’t do that with decrees in the previous portion, Acharey Moth.

But which decrees? Their sameness jumps out at us. They blend and breathe from portion to portion. Therefore, I think we have one happening here told on two levels of consciousness, that of basic life force and (in Kedushim) that of life force to spiritual integrity to expansion. I think the decrees protect the core of our being, make it pure. And we want it to be pure. Only what is fully conscious can be itself enough to expand to anything. Only words can create expansion between them. Only knowing what we’re not lets us know what we are, allows our kinetic energy to gather within until it finally explodes into the white space. There’s more. I think in Kedoshim it’s clear that if this process is cut off by a decree, we (and our community) have the wrong reading. After all, God wants us to be holy like He is holy.

Let’s look at the repetition. While the words I love you can be said with a million different intonations, I think that repetition is a form of divine intonation. It’s simple. I am the Lord your God and I am the Lord your God again means I am God and more. It does not mean He has a Napoleon complex and needs to validate His authority. The message is to listen.

Let’s look at the shall and the shall not’s. Imagine. The mother says do not take a cookie from the cookie jar. What’s going to happen? The child will take it or not. He will certainly think it over. That is the holy act, the deliberation. Decrees in the affirmative call for specific types of behavior. To be holy we must define them. Deliberation and definition. Of course, this takes time and community. Gestation and sharing of the fruit is necessary, especially given the flow of Torah. Clearly, though, the divine intonation of verbal constructs (and repetition) in these portions infers that blind acceptance is not at all divine intention.

So, I think Kedoshim brings us closer to equanimity and to God but not if we are soul deaf. I think the biggest decree is between the solid lines. We shall listen to God and listen more. We shall be holy and act holy; we shall find the land of milk and honey. And let us shine strong in layers of Torah, natural, like in the waters of above and below folding into one moment.